The complement of the IP is the predicate of the sentence, a verb phrase (VP). Its specifier is the noun phrase (NP) which acts as the subject of the sentence. A transformational grammar theory might parse this sentence as the following diagram shows: Consider the sentence He studies linguistics at the university. A full sentenceįor more complex utterances, different theories of grammar assign X-bar theory elements to phrase types in different ways. Other languages use different word order. Thus, determiners always precede their nouns if they are in the same noun phrase. In English, specifiers precede the X-bar that contains the head. The DetP and NP above have no adjuncts or complements, so they end up being very linear. Note that branches with empty specifiers, adjuncts, complements, and heads are often omitted, to reduce visual clutter. More recently, it has been suggested that D is the head of the noun phrase. The word cat is the noun phrase (NP) which acts as the complement of the determiner phrase. The head is the determiner (D) which projects into a determiner phrase (DP or DetP). The word the is a determiner (specifically an article), which at first was believed to be a type of specifier for nouns. The noun phrase "the cat" might be rendered like this: Note that a complement-containing X' may be distinguished from an adjunct-containing X' by the fact that the complement has an X (head) as a sibling, whereas an adjunct has X-bar as a sibling. The above example maps naturally onto the left-to-right phrase order used in English. However, in any given language, usually only one handedness for each rule is observed. ![]() Because the rules are recursive, there is an infinite number of possible structures that could be generated, including smaller trees that omit optional parts, structures with multiple complements, and additional layers of XPs and X′s of various types.īecause all of the rules allow combination in any order, the left-right position of the branches at any point may be reversed from what is shown in the example. The following diagram illustrates one way the rules might be combined to form a generic XP structure. (a head-first and a head-final example showing one complement) How the rules combine Another kind of X-bar consists of an X (the head of the phrase) and any number of complements (possibly zero), in any order: Not all XPs contain X′s with adjuncts, so this rewrite rule is "optional".ģ. One kind of X-bar consists of an X-bar and an adjunct, in either order: An X Phrase consists of an optional specifier and an X-bar, in any order:Ģ. All three representations are presented below.ġ. These rules can be expressed in English, as immediate dominance rules for natural language (useful for example for programmers in the field of NLP- natural language processing), or visually as parse trees. There are three "syntax assembly" rules which form the basis of X-bar theory. Recent work in the Minimalist Program has largely abandoned X-bar schemata in favor of Bare Phrase Structure approaches. X-bar theory was incorporated into both transformational and nontransformational theories of syntax, including GB, GPSG, LFG, and HPSG. ![]() 6) approach to categories, and further developed by Ray Jackendoff (1977). X-bar theory was first proposed by Noam Chomsky (1970), building on Zellig Harris's 1951 (ch. The notation XP stands for X Phrase, and is at the equivalent level of X-bar-bar (X with a double overbar), written X″ or X 2, usually read aloud as X double bar. ![]() In English, however, this is still read as "X bar". Because this may be difficult to typeset, this is often written as X′, using the prime symbol or with superscript numerals as exponents, e.g., X 1. Certain structures are represented by X (an X with a bar over it). The term X-bar is derived from the notation representing this structure. Thus, the X may become an N for noun, a V for verb, an A for adjective, or a P for preposition. The letter X is used to signify an arbitrary lexical category (part of speech) when analyzing a specific utterance, specific categories are assigned. It embodies two independent claims: one, that phrases may contain intermediate constituents projected from a head X and two, that this system of projected constituency may be common to more than one category (e.g., N, V, A, P, etc.). X-bar theory is a theory of syntactic category formation.
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